Credibility is an important ranking factor. The more credible
a website
is, the better it will rank on Google. How do search engines measure
the
credibility of a website and what can you do to improve the credibility
of your own site?

In the news: How Google creates synthetic queries,
Bing search insights, a new search engine just for tablets, and more.

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1. How to improve the credibility of your website

Credibility is an
important ranking factor. The more credible a website is, the better it
will rank on Google. How do search engines measure the credibility of a
website and what can you do to improve the credibility of your own
site?

A) Proven elements that
influence the credibility of your website

There are several elements that search engines have been using for a
long time to determine the credibility of a website:

Backlinks: the
links that point to your website greatly contribute to the
trustworthiness of your site. If your website has mainly automatically
created low quality links then this won't have a positive effect on
your rankings.

Links from reputable websites will have a positive effect on the
credibility of your own site.

Links to other websites:
if your website contains a lot of links to irrelevant websites then
this can have a negative influence on the credibility of your site. If
your website mainly offers affiliate links or if many of the links to
other websites are broken then this might also have a negative
influence.

Error-free pages: search
engines won't find your website trustworthy if it contains a lot of
errors. Your web pages shouldn't contain broken links or missing
images. A lot of spelling mistakes can also be a sign of a low quality
website.

Many website visitors:
Google has many ways to track the number of visitors that a website
gets (Chrome, Analytics, etc.). A website that gets many visitors seems
more trustworthy than a website with only a few visitors.

Good web page navigation: a
clear website navigation that makes it easy to find pages is an
indicator of a good website. If people find what they're looking for on
your web pages, search engines will give these pages a boost. In
addition, a good website structure helps search engines to index all of
your pages.

B) New elements that can
influence the credibility of your website

In addition to the proven elements above, there are some new elements
that influence the credibility of your site.

The number of social
mentions: the more often your web pages are mentioned on
Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media websites, the more
credible your website can be.

Of course, only real mentions from real people will have a positive
influence. Fake likes and mentions might have a negative influence.

Verified authorship:
web pages with a verified
author that has a good reputation can get better rankings on
Google. At this time, the effect of a verified authorship on the
rankings of your website seems to be low.

A credible website is important if you want to have a successful online
business. In addition to higher rankings on Google and other search
engines, people tend to buy much more on credible websites.

"When someone searches at Google, their query
might not express the informational or situational need that they have.
It might be too broad, too ambiguous, or vague in some other manner. A
well-formulated query instead might contain terms returning resources
addressing the searcher’s intent, which might be measured by
performance metrics."

"Is it Swarzinegar, Swarneger, Scwarznagger or
Schwartiznegar? [...] Bing’s Speller processes tens of millions of data
points mined from searches, web pages, clicks and user actions to help
you find the right 'Schwarzenegger.' [...]

"Sitelink Extensions lets you beef up your search ads
with up to six additional links, giving you the chance to take users
deeper into your site to more specific pages, right from your search
ad, potentially increasing customer engagement and SEM results."

"izik (pronounced EYE-zik) is an application for
tablets that allows you to search, explore and discover the Web.
Tablets are getting further integrated into our lives in a fun and
functional way. With izik, our goal is to have the practicality of the
Web unfold at your fingertips in a fun and playful manner."